Posts Tagged ‘Country Life Farm’
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
By Ray Paulick
What does a former longtime editor of Blood-Horse magazine have to do with one of the leading sires of American Graded Stakes winners of 2009?
Plenty, if you ask Josh Pons, who helps run his family’s Country Life Farm in Maryland, where top sire Malibu Moon got his start at stud in the year 2000 for a modest fee of just $3,000 live foal.
This is not about yours truly, who served as Blood-Horse editor in chief from 1992-2007, but Kent Hollingsworth, who held that post (as well as publisher) with great distinction for nearly a quarter century, from 1963-86. Hollingsworth was a mentor to Pons, a former two-time Eclipse Award-winning writer for the weekly magazine (and to many others who respected Hollingsworth for his insights, intellect, sense of humor and courage). When Hollingsworth died in 1999, Pons traveled from Maryland to Kentucky to attend a memorial service at the Kentucky Horse Park.
While in Lexington for the July 1 memorial, Pons ran into horseman John Stuart, who told him about an A.P. Indy colt that suffered a career-ending slab fracture of the knee after an impressive Hollywood Park 2-year-old maiden victory for owner B. Wayne Hughes and trainer Mel Stute. Pons was looking for a stallion to add to the Country Life roster and thought, “Hey, I’m halfway to California, maybe I can find a cheap flight and go take a look at the horse.”
It meant Pons would have to miss the annual Fourth of July celebration at the farm, but he followed his instincts, got that cheap flight, and struck a deal with Hughes to buy a half-interest in Malibu Moon and bring him to Maryland. He admits there wasn’t a lot of competition to stand the horse at stud.
 To this day, even after Malibu Moon was moved to Kentucky, standing first at the late Dr. Tony Ryan’s Castleton Lyons Farm and now at Hughes’ Spendthrift Farm, that deal is paying dividends to Country Life, which retains a 25% share in the horse. In a strange kind of way, Hollingsworth gets more than a little credit.
“That such an important person in my life made this kind of a beneficial impact—even from the grave—is really kind of amazing,” Pons said of Hollingsworth. Pons said he stops by a small marker memorializing Hollingsworth at the Kentucky Horse Park when he is in Lexington.
Despite having only that one win from two starts, Malibu Moon was well received by breeders in the Midatlantic region, getting over 100 mares his first year for a stud fee of $3,000 live foal. “He was such a handsome horse that he really stood out,” said Pons. From his first crop of 62 foals came 44 winners, 13 of them as 2-year-olds, and seven stakes winners, including multiple American Graded Stakes winner Perfect Moon. At the end of 2003, he was moved to Castleton Lyons, which bought half of Country Life’s half interest. “It was a little bit like a game of poker,” said Pons, “but Mr. Hughes said 25% of the horse would be worth more in Kentucky than 50% in Maryland.” Malibu Moon’s fee went up to $10,000 for 2004, and then to $40,000 in 2005 after Declan’s Moon (from his second crop) won an Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old male of 2004. He stood four years at Castleton Lyons, then moved to Spendthrift before the 2008 breeding season. He stood for $40,000 in 2009.
“Country Life did a great job getting him rolling, and Castleton did a tremendous job while they had him,” said Ken Wilkins, who joined the Spendthrift team as stallion director in October 2007. Wilkins said the book was closed for Malibu Moon after he was bred to 152 mares in 2008 and, with overall demand down, 136 mares in 2009. Hughes, who owns about 120 mares, bred 11 to Malibu Moon himself this year.
“The last four years he’s been A.P. Indy’s leading son of stakes winners,” Wilkins of Malibu Moon. “The next hurdle for him is to be a sire of sires. With better mares coming, it’s a matter of time for that to happen.”
Malibu Moon has sired six American Graded Stakes winners of 2009, the same as Giant’s Causeway, Dixie Union, Pulpit and Candy Ride. Only his sire, A.P. Indy, has more, with eight. Malibu Moon’s six AGS winners are Grade 1 winners Funny Moon (out of an Easy Goer Mare), winner of the Coaching Club American Oaks, and Devil May Care (Red Ransom mare), winner of the Frizette; Grade 2 winner Luna Vega (Rock Royalty mare), winner of the Molly Pitcher Handicap; and Grade 3 winners Ah Day (Thirty Eight Paces mare), winner of the Toboggan Handicap, Sweet August Moon (Royal Academy mare), winner of the Las Flores Stakes, and Sara Louise (Mt. Livermore mare), winner of the Victory Ride Stakes.
Mr. Prospector’s 17-year-old daughter Macoumba, a stakes winner in France who produced Malibu Moon, is currently in foal to Distorted Humor and has a yearling by Dynaformer.
In some respects, Malibu Moon winning even one race was something of a longshot. As a foal, he was stepped on by his dam and suffered a cracked pastern. According to Pons, Hughes was told the horse would probably never race, though he recovered from that injury and blossomed in training for Stute, showing unusual precocity for a son of A.P. Indy. “Not many A.P. Indys win in May,” Pons said.
It’s a longshot for any horse that wins just one race to have the opportunity to succeed at stud, but Malibu Moon has overcome the odds. The credit for that success can be spread around, to farms in Maryland and Kentucky, and to an editor that Josh Pons will never forget.
Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report
Sign up for our Email Flashes to get the latest news, analysis and commentary from Ray Paulick
Tags: a.p. indy, American Graded Stakes Standings, b. wayne hughes, blood-horse, candy ride, castleton lyons, Country Life Farm, Dixie Union, giant's causeway, Josh Pons, Keeneland, ken wilkins, kent hollingsworth, macoumba, malibu moon, mel stute, mr. prospector', pulpit, spendthrift farm
Posted in American Graded Stakes Standings, Keeneland, Stallions | 5 Comments »
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Do you know an individual or organization who you think we should consider for an upcoming “Good News Friday” feature? Then please e-mail info@paulickreport.com with the name of the individual or organization and a brief description of why you think they should be featured. Additionally, we’d like to thank Rob Whiteley and Liberation Farm for encouraging us to bring to light some of the industry’s positive stories and for sponsoring this exclusive Paulick Report feature.
By Ray Paulick
The Country Life Farm Preakness Party has been a staple of the Triple Crown season since the victories in the 1961 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes by Carry Back, a blue-collar colt sired by the Country Life Farm stallion Saggy. Country Life Farm, based about 45 minutes north of Baltimore in Fallston, Md., is the state’s oldest continuously run Thoroughbred farm. It’s under the direction today of Mike and Josh Pons, grandsons of the founder, Adolphe Pons, who was an adviser to August Belmont during the years when the latter bred and raised the great Man o’ War.
 This year’s Preakness Party, held on the lawn of the farm’s main residence as usual on Thursday night, was much more than a celebration of the Triple Crown’s middle jewel or of Maryland’s Thoroughbred industry, one that is currently in a fight for its life. The 2009 Country Life Party was a belated 80th birthday party for family matriarch Mary Jo Pons and a gathering of some of the people who have been part of her life for the last 30 years at the
Radio Reading Network of Maryland, an organization that serves individuals who are visually or physically impaired to the point that they are unable to read for themselves.
Mary Jo Pons was a longtime volunteer for the 501(c)3 charity that operates a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week radio station that has volunteers reading from local and national newspapers, magazines, and books. She now serves as Radio Reading Network of Maryland’s executive director.
“If we had more people like Mary Jo and Joe Pons (her late husband), our industry would be a lot better industry than it is today,” said Herb Moelis, who with his wife, Ellen, and the late Allaire DuPont a fellow resident of Delaware, founded Thoroughbred Charities of America.
“I can’t tell you how much Mary Jo and Joe Pons did to make my life more fulfilling,” said Robert Lewis, a self-professed technical whiz who has been involved with the Radio Reading Network since 1980 and is its program manager today. Lewis (pictured, right, at the radio network’s controls) also has been blind since birth. “They’ve taken me places and described in great detail what exactly it is they see. That means so much to someone like me who can’t see.”
Mary Jo lost her husband of 55 years, who she said was her “number one volunteer at the reading network, in 2005.
“We would drive into the city together and he’d take me to the network (whose studio is based at the Baltimore City Community College just north of downtown),” Mary Jo said. “He’d have a nap until post time and then go off to Pimlico.”
“Dad said, ‘I would go to any lengths to help Mary Jo, especially if it it’s only a few lengths from Pimlico,’” Josh Pons recalled with a smile about his father.
 “We would also do speaking engagements at various service clubs,” Mary Jo said of Joe (the couple is pictured to the left). “He would drive me, because they usually had a pretty good meal, especially if it was out in the country where the meals were always better. But he truly recognized the need for the network and thoroughly enjoyed the volunteers and helping me.”
Joe Pons was involved in his own service to the community. A recovering alcoholic, he helped organize 12-Step recovery meetings at a local prison. At the memorial service held in his honor, many of the people he helped recover from alcoholism and drug addiction came to Country Life to pay their respects.
Mary Jo Pons began her work in radio at the age of 18, when she had her own show five days a week to talk about women’s issues like fashion and cooking. “I worked for a department store and I was their fashion personality, Betty Howard,” she said. “The store was on Howard Street. They used that name on some of their merchandise.”
Later on, she hosted a classical music show on Sundays in Baltimore. When she felt a calling to do volunteer work, the Radio Reading Network seemed like a natural to her.
Today, the organization has more than 75 volunteers reading on a tightly run programming schedule that can be heard on a special radio signal throughout the state and on Maryland Public Television’s Second Audio Program. Thousands of sight impaired or paralyzed individuals who are unable to read tune in daily.“It is a key to life for so many of our listeners,” said Pons. “Many of them are elderly, and they have been voracious readers all their lives and they have lost their vision through glaucoma or diabetes or various other ailments. It’s very difficult to adjust to life without being able to read. We provide to them a link to the newspapers, or what’s left of them, or to magazines and books. The one paper we don’t read is the Daily Racing Form, and I’m sorry for that. But we do read other articles from daily papers that have to do with racing.
“Horse people have been very generous,” added Pons. “We’ve had volunteers from the industry who come to read and also many of them contribute financially.”
Radio Reading Network readers even go through the shopping and food ads to alert listeners of sale prices. They also read the obituaries, which Pons said “is kind of tough. You might know about a movie star that died, but unless you can read the paper you probably wouldn’t have heard about your neighbor or someone down the street that’s passed away. It’s very important, especially when you consider the age of so many of our listeners.”
Pons said she finds the work extremely fulfilling. “We had this one listener, the wife of a local sportswriter. She had cancer, but had been such a voracious reader she earlier took a job in a book store to feed her habit. The medication required to treat her cancer blurred her vision and prevented her from being able to read. In radio, you always want to avoid the sounds of shuffling papers and you have a cough button if you have to clear your throat. But this woman said those were the sounds she liked the most. She often couldn’t sleep, and would get up at all hours and tune in to the network. ‘I love to hear the sounds of those people in the middle of the night,’ she would tell us. ‘I know there was someone reading just for me, and I felt as if I wasn’t alone.’”
If you’d like to become a volunteer for the Radio Reading Network or to make a donation to this organization, please click here or call (410) 462-8580.
Liberation Farm celebrates the many horsemen and horsewomen who strive each day to make things better for horses and those who work with them. To learn more about Liberation Farm, click here.
Previous Good News Friday subjects: Father Chris Clay, The Race for Education, Military Appreciation Day at Keeneland, Kentucky Oaks Pink Out for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Mary Lee-Butte and the Blue Grass Farms Chaplaincy.
Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report
Visit the Paulick Report for all the latest news throughout the racing world.
Sign up for our Email Flashes to get the latest news, analysis and commentary from Ray Paulick
Tags: Adolphe Pons, Carry Back, Country Life Farm, Good News Friday, Herb and Ellen Moelis, Horse Racing, Joseph Pons, Josh Pons, Mary Jo Pons, Maryland Horse Industry, Mike Pons, Paulick Report, preakness, Radio Reading Network, Radio Reading Network of Maryland, Ray Paulick, Robert Lewis, Saggy, Triple Crown, vision impaired
Posted in Good News Friday, Maryland Horse Industry, People | 8 Comments »
|
|
.jpg)
